The following action was taken over the university’s
failure to care for our community.

PREAMBLE‘Work
is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only
with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and
sit
at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with
joy.” (Excerpt from The Prophet by
Kahlil Gibran.)

Declaration
of Freedom

December 2, 2009 We the people of the community
of South Oakland, in order to live with dignity in a clean and healthy environment, demand
the resignations of the University of Pittsburgh Chancellor Mark Nordenberg,
and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center President/CEO Jeffrey Romoff.We believe this truth to be self-evident,
that human dignity takes precedence over expansion and the earning
of billions of dollars.We believe that nowhere in our country has
a University taken so much from a community and given back so little.We believe that Mark Nordenberg and Jeffrey
Romoff do not deeply care about the welfare of our community.We believe Mark Nordenberg and Jeffrey Romoff
do not respect and honor the dignity in each of the residents of our
community.We believe Mark Nordenberg and Jeffrey Romoff
lack compassion and are deliberately indifferent to the needs of our
community.We believe it would be in the best interest
of Mark Nordenberg and Jeffrey Romoff, and especially the community of
South Oakland, that they leave their present jobs and work for institutions
whereby they would love the community they impact.

—

Update: On June 28, 2013
Chancellor Mark Nordenberg announced that he is retiring on August 1,
2014. It is our hope that the chancellor will move his retirement date
forward to the present.